{"id":149,"date":"2015-05-10T01:06:36","date_gmt":"2015-05-10T08:06:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.greenpathtowellness.com\/blog\/?page_id=149"},"modified":"2015-05-20T21:16:45","modified_gmt":"2015-05-21T04:16:45","slug":"esperanto-a-western-language","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/www.greenpathtowellness.com\/website\/?page_id=149","title":{"rendered":"Esperanto, a Western Language?"},"content":{"rendered":"

ESPERANTO, A WESTERN LANGUAGE ?<\/span><\/h3>\n

If you examine Esperanto from the outside, you\u2019ll be tempted to consider it a Western language. Its pronunciation will remind you of the sounds of Italian\u00a0<\/span>and its vocabulary has, to a large extent, a definite Romance flavor. If you have the opportunity to hear a conversation in that language, you will soon\u00a0<\/span>notice that “yes” is used just as in English and is pronounced in the same way (but it is written jes). This will seem to confirm the Western nature of\u00a0<\/span>the language. If, being more conversant with linguistics and listening more carefully, you perceive a relatively high proportion of Germanic roots, you\u00a0<\/span>will conclude that it is indeed a Western language, and that, just as in English, its words are of both Latin and Germanic stock.<\/span><\/p>\n

If you have studied Greek, you will find it a bit more Eastern than you thought at first. “And” translates as kaj (rhyming with I), which is the exact equivalent\u00a0<\/span>of the ancient Greek kai, and plurals are apparently inspired by Homer\u2019s language. In ancient Greek, parallelos ‘a parallel line’ becomes in the plural\u00a0<\/span>paralleloi ‘parallel lines’; in Esperanto, the plural of paralelo is paraleloj (rhyming with boy), a very close approximation to the classical Greek pronunciation.<\/span><\/p>\n

Seeing an Esperanto text may somewhat alter your first impressions. The presence of some consonants with little hooks, the recurrence of the letter j after\u00a0<\/span>a vowel at the end of words, groups of letters like kv give it an aspect reminiscent of Slovene or Croatian. If this suggests to you a Slavic influence,\u00a0<\/span>you\u2019ll be on the right track. Esperanto was born in Eastern Europe. Its syntax, many grammatical features, a number of phrases and the style of a typical\u00a0<\/span>sentence do betray an important Slavic substratum. The same may be said of semantics. While the word plena ‘full’ is taken from Romance languages, its\u00a0<\/span>usage is not restricted to the meaning of the French plein or the Portuguese pleno, it covers the same semantic field as the Russian polnyj, which derives\u00a0<\/span>from the same old Indo-European root pln. In no Romance language could you speak of a plein dictionnaire, pleno dicionario (literally, ‘full dictionary’),<\/span><\/p>\n

you’ll use a word like complet, completo and put it after the noun. Plena vortaro, in Esperanto, is a literal rendering of the Russian ‘polnyj slovar’\u00a0<\/span>even in the way ‘dictionary’ is derived from ‘word’ (Russian slovo ‘word’, slovar ‘dictionary’; Esperanto vorto ‘word’, vortaro ‘dictionary’).<\/span><\/p>\n

Has Esperanto anything in common with Semitic languages? In form, no, in spirit, yes. As in Arabic and Hebrew, Esperanto makes up most of its vocabulary\u00a0<\/span>through derivation from invariable roots. True, in Semitic languages, roots are almost always made up of three consonants and derivation is often effected\u00a0<\/span>by inserting vowels in between, whereas in Esperanto roots have no predetermined pattern and the only way of deriving a word from a root is to add something\u00a0<\/span>either at the beginning or at the end. All the same, the Esperanto version of the Hebrew Bible contains approximately the same number of roots as the original.<\/span><\/p>\n

In this it is much closer to the latter than translations in Western languages, forced to use numerous words which, unlike their equivalents in Hebrew\u00a0<\/span>and Esperanto, have no transparent derivation.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

If, proceeding further towards the Orient, we go over from Arabic to Persian, we leave a language with a complicated grammar and a lot of exceptions to\u00a0<\/span>come upon a rather remarkably consistent language. In Arabic, in order to form the plural, you often have to transform the whole interior of the word: \u00a0<\/span>kitab ‘book’ becomes kutub ‘books’. Persian, which has borrowed many words from Arabic, has not kept the latter’s irregular plurals. To form the plural,\u00a0<\/span>you add the ending \u2013ha, so that the plural of kitab has not to be memorized separately, it is simply kitabha, ‘books’. Esperanto is characterized by a\u00a0<\/span>similar simplicity. You need just a split second to learn how to form the plural of any noun, since you only have to remember that it is done by adding\u00a0<\/span>a j, which is always pronounced as the y in boy. What a difference with languages like German, Hausa, Arabic, in which you are practically obliged to learn\u00a0<\/span>the plural with every new noun! And even with English, more consistent, but still presenting a number of exceptions: woman, child, foot, mouse, sheep and\u00a0<\/span>many other words do not follow the general rule which states that you form the plural by adding an \u2013s.<\/span><\/p>\n

Most Westerners do not imagine that some languages are so consistent that irregular verbs, exceptions in plural formation or unclear derivation are, for\u00a0<\/span>their speakers, unthinkable, something like the aberrant product of a neurotic mind. It is so much more pleasant to do without those inconsistencies and\u00a0<\/span>yet to understand one another perfectly! Among such languages are Chinese, Vietnamese and\u2026 Esperanto. These three have in common a feature that sets them\u00a0<\/span>apart from most languages, especially the Indo-European ones: they are composed of strictly invariable elements which can combine without restriction.<\/span><\/p>\n

For people who speak such a language, the idea that ‘first’ cannot be derived from ‘one’ as tenth is from ten, seems quite bizarre, as it seems incomprehensible\u00a0<\/span>that there is no pattern in the modulations of pronouns, so that you have to learn, besides I, a whole series of words like me, my and mine. In Chinese,\u00a0<\/span>‘my’ and ‘mine’ are, so to say, the adjective form of ‘I’: wo, ‘I’, wode ‘my’, ‘mine’ (compare women ‘we’, womende ‘our’, ‘ours’).<\/span><\/p>\n

Esperanto derives the corresponding words in the same way. As a result, parallel realities are expressed in both languages by parallel forms, which cannot\u00a0<\/span>be said of any Western language. In ‘He takes yours, you take his’, the reciprocity of the gestures appears in the language as well in Chinese (ta na nide,\u00a0<\/span>ni na tade) as in Esperanto (li prenas vian, vi prenas lian). In English, while the symmetry is visible, it is not as perfect as in both Chinese and Esperanto: \u00a0<\/span>you cannot form yours from you or his from he, you have to learn those words as separate entities, and what is take in one part of the sentence becomes\u00a0<\/span>takes in the other. Units or details to be memorized in order to express oneself correctly are considerably more numerous in Western languages than in\u00a0<\/span>Chinese or Esperanto.<\/span><\/p>\n

In word formation as well Chinese and Esperanto share a similarity of patterns. In English, as in French, you have to learn separately such words as fellow-citizen\u00a0<\/span>and coreligionist and you cannot express in one word the concept ‘a person of the same race’ or ‘somebody who speaks the same language’. In Chinese, you\u00a0<\/span>have only to know the structure and the basic word. Just as in Esperanto: to form samlandano ‘fellow-citizen’, ‘compatriot’, samreligiano ‘coreligionist’,\u00a0<\/span>samklasano ‘school fellow’, ‘kid who is in the same class’, samrasano ‘person of the same race’, samlingvano ‘person with the same mother tongue’, you\u00a0<\/span>just have to know the pattern sam—ano and to insert the corresponding root. Similarly, a Chinese who studies English, French or Italian has to memorize\u00a0<\/span>as a completely different unit the word foreigner (\u00e9tranger, straniero). If he learns Esperanto, he has only to translate syllable after syllable (morpheme\u00a0<\/span>after morpheme, a linguist would say) the three elements of the word in his mother tongue: waiguoren ‘foreigner’ is made up of wai ‘outside’ (Esperanto:\u00a0<\/span>ekster), guo ‘country’ (Esperanto: land) and ren ‘human being’ (corresponding here to the Esperanto ano, a human being who belongs to, who is a member\u00a0<\/span>of, who resides in\u2026). ‘Foreigner’ is eksterlandano in Esperanto.<\/span><\/p>\n

Here is another example. The Chinese who tries to acquire a Western language and wishes to be able to speak accurately of animals has to memorize a whole\u00a0<\/span>series of nouns which, in his own language, follow regular patterns. To have learned horse is of no avail if he has to express (or to understand) mare,\u00a0<\/span>colt and stallion; similarly, knowing how to say ox does not help him to say cow, calf and bull (to say nothing of beef ,veal and similar words). In Chinese,\u00a0<\/span>such words are part of a consistent table. They are respectively ma, muma, xiaoma and gongma (for the horse family), niu, muniu, xiaoniu and gongniu (for\u00a0<\/span>the ox family). The system is just as consistent in Esperanto. The relationship is the same between, on the one hand, \u0109evalo (\u0109 is pronounced as ch) and\u00a0<\/span>\u0109evalino, \u0109evalido, vir\u0109evalo, and, on the other hand, between bovo and bovino, bovido and virbovo.<\/span><\/p>\n

Those who criticize Esperanto for being too Western overlook two important aspects of the question. First, they neglect to proceed to a linguistic analysis\u00a0<\/span>of the language, which is the only way to discover how different it is, in depth, from what it seems to be at first sight: their judgment is purely superficial. \u00a0<\/span>Second, they ignore the fact that some language is necessary if people with different mother tongues have to communicate. In practice, on what language\u00a0<\/span>does one fall back when mutual comprehension is needed and Esperanto is not used? On English! Isn’t this one a Western language? As a matter of fact, it\u00a0<\/span>has many more Western features than Esperanto, and is much more difficult to learn and use for the large majority of the inhabitants of our planet. No\u00a0<\/span>language could put all peoples on an equal footing. But among all those that exist and are being used, Esperanto comes closest to that ideal. After 2000\u00a0<\/span>hours of English (five hours a week for ten school years), the average Japanese and Chinese are incapable of using it in a really operational way. Their\u00a0<\/span>clumsiness, as well as their difficulty in producing the relevant sounds, tend to complicate communication or to make them ridiculous, a risk which is,\u00a0<\/span>unfairly, spared the native speaker of English, although he is the one who has made no effort towards mutual understanding. After 220 hours of Esperanto,\u00a0<\/span>as an average, Eastern Asians can really communicate in that language, a language which is a foreign language for everybody and in which the risk of sounding\u00a0<\/span>strange is thus equally distributed.<\/span><\/p>\n

Whoever wants to play fair and to be objective has to refrain from criticizing Esperanto as long as he has not proceeded to a deep enough analysis of the\u00a0<\/span>language and to comparisons with English and the mother tongues of the peoples whose interests he pretends to defend. In a democracy, you are presumed\u00a0<\/span>innocent as long as your guilt has not been proven. It would be in accordance with the best Western traditions to apply that principle to Esperanto and\u00a0<\/span>to reserve one’s judgment until the evidence has been examined. No serious linguist, journalist or politician would dare pass judgment on Tagalog or Malayalam\u00a0<\/span>without having gathered facts on those languages. There is no reason to adopt a different attitude about Esperanto.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ESPERANTO, A WESTERN LANGUAGE ? If you examine Esperanto from the outside, you\u2019ll be tempted to consider it a Western language. Its pronunciation will remind you of the sounds of Italian\u00a0and its vocabulary has, to a large extent, a definite … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":143,"menu_order":1,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.greenpathtowellness.com\/website\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/149"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.greenpathtowellness.com\/website\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.greenpathtowellness.com\/website\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.greenpathtowellness.com\/website\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.greenpathtowellness.com\/website\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=149"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.greenpathtowellness.com\/website\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/149\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":231,"href":"http:\/\/www.greenpathtowellness.com\/website\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/149\/revisions\/231"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.greenpathtowellness.com\/website\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.greenpathtowellness.com\/website\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}